It

Page 49

Ben was very quiet during the show. Ole Haystack had nearly been spotted by Henry, Belch, and Victor earlier, and Richie assumed that was all that was troubling him. Ben, however, had forgotten all about the creeps (they were sitting close to the screen down below, chucking popcorn boxes at each other and hooting). Beverly was the reason for his silence. Her nearness was so overwhelming that he was almost ill with it. His body would break out in goosebumps and then, if she should so much as shift in her seat, his skin would flash hot, as if with a tropical fever. When her hand brushed his reaching for the popcorn, he trembled with exaltation. He thought later that those three hours in the dark next to Beverly had been both the longest and shortest hours of his life.
Richie, unaware that Ben was in deep throes of calf-love, was feeling just as fine as paint. In his book the only thing any better than a couple of Francis the Talking Mule pictures was a couple of horror pictures in a theater filled with kids, all of them yelling and screaming at the gory parts. He certainly did not connect any of the goings-ons in the two low-budget American-International pictures they were watching with what was going on in town... not then, at least.
He had seen the Twin Shock Show Saturday Matinee ad in the News on Friday morning and had almost immediately forgotten how badly he had slept the night before-and how he had finally gotten up and turned on the light in his closet, a real baby trick for sure, but he hadn't been able to get a wink of sleep until he'd done it. But by the following morning things had seemed normal again... well, almost. He began to think that maybe he and Bill had just shared a hallucination. Of course the cuts on Bill's fingers weren't a hallucination, but maybe they'd just been paper-cuts from some of the sheets in Georgie's album. Pretty thick paper. Could of been. Maybe. Besides, there was no law saying he had to spend the next ten years thinking about it, was there? Nope.
And so, following an experience that might well have sent an adult running for the nearest headshrinker, Richie Tozier got up, ate a giant pancake breakfast, saw the ad for the two horror movies on the Amusements page of the paper, checked his funds, found them a little low (well... "nonexistent" might actually have been a better word), and began to pester his father for chores.
His dad, who had come to the table already wearing his white dentist's tunic, put down the Sports pages and poured himself a second cup of coffee. He was a pleasant-looking man with a rather thin face. He wore steel-rimmed spectacles, was developing a bald spot at the back of his head, and would die of cancer of the larynx in 1973. He looked at the ad to which Richie was pointing.
"Horror movies," Wentworth Tozier said.
"Yeah," Richie said, grinning.
"Feel like you have to go," Wentworth Tozier said.
"Yeah!"
"Feel like you'll probably die in convulsions of disappointment if you don't get to see those two trashy movies."
"Yeah, yeah, I would! I know I would! Graaaag!" Richie fell out of his chair onto the floor, clutching his throat, his tongue sticking out. This was Richie's admittedly peculiar way of turning on the charm.
"Oh God, Richie, will you please stop it?" his mother asked him from the stove, where she was frying him a couple of eggs to top off the pancakes.
"Gee, Rich," his father said as Richie got back into his chair. "I guess I must have forgotten to pay you your allowance on Monday. That's the only reason I can think of for you needing more money on Friday."
"Well..."
"Gone?"
"Well..."
"That's an extremely deep subject for a boy with such a shallow mind," Wentworth Tozier said. He put his elbow on the table and then cupped his chin on the palm of his hand, regarding his only son with what appeared to be deep fascination. "Where'd it go?"
Richie immediately fell into the Voice of Toodles the English Butler. "Why, I spent it, didn't I, guv'nor? Pip-pip, cheerio, and all that rot! My part of the war effort. All got to do our bit to beat back the bloody Hun, don't we? Bit of a sticky wicket, ay-wot? Bit of a wet hedgehog, wot-wot? Bit of a-"
"Bit of a pile of bullshit," Went said amiably, and reached for the strawberry preserves.
"Spare me the vulgarity at the breakfast table, if you please," Maggie Tozier said to her husband as she brought Richie's eggs over to the table. And to Richie: "I don't know why you want to fill your head up with such awful junk anyway."
"Aw, Mom," Richie said. He was outwardly crushed, inwardly jubilant. He could read both of his parents like books-well-worn and well-loved books-and he was pretty sure he was going to get what he wanted: chores and permission to go to the show Saturday afternoon.
Went leaned forward toward Richie and smiled widely. "I think I have you right where I want you," he said.
"Is that right, Dad?" Richie said, and smiled back... a trifle uneasily.
"Oh yes. You know our lawn, Richie? You are familiar with our lawn?"
"Indeed I am, guv'nor," Richie said, becoming Toodles again-or trying to. "Bit shaggy, ay-wot?"
"Wot-wot," Went agreed. "And you, Richie, will remedy that condition."
"I will?"
"You will. Mow it, Richie."
"Okay, Dad, sure," Richie said, but a terrible suspicion had suddenly blossomed in his mind. Maybe his dad didn't mean just the front lawn.
Wentworth Tozier's smile widened to a predatory shark's grin. "All of it, O idiot child of my loins. Front. Back. Sides. And when you finish, I will cross your palm with two green pieces of paper with the likeness of George Washington on one side and a picture of a pyramid o'ertopped with the Ever-Watching Oculary on the other."
"I don't get you, Dad," Richie said, but he was afraid he did.
"Two bucks."
"Two bucks for the whole lawn?" Richie cried, genuinely wounded. "It's the biggest lawn on the block! Jeez, Dad!"
Went sighed and picked the paper up again. Richie could read the front page headline: MISSING BOY PROMPTS NEW FEARS. He thought briefly of George Denbrough's strange scrapbook-but that had surely been a hallucination... and even if it hadn't been, that was yesterday and this was today.
"Guess you didn't want to see those movies as bad as you thought," Went said from behind the paper. A moment later his eyes appeared over the top, studying Richie. Studying him a trifle smugly, in truth. Studying him the way a man with four of a kind studies his poker opponent over the fan of his cards.
"When the Clark twins do it all, you give them two dollars each!"
"That's true," Went admitted. "But as far as I know, they don't want to go to the movies tomorrow. Or if they do, they must have funds sufficient to the occasion, because they haven't popped by to check the state of the herbiage surrounding our domicile lately. You, on the other hand, do want to go and find yourself lacking the funds to do so. That pressure you feel in your midsection may be the five pancakes and two eggs you ate for breakfast, Richie, or it may just be the barrel I have you over. Wot-wot?" Went's eyes submerged behind the paper again.
"He's blackmailing me," Richie said to his mother, who was eating dry toast. She was trying to lose weight again. This is blackmail, I just hope you know that."
"Yes, dear, I know that," his mother said. "There's egg on your chin."
Richie wiped the egg off his chin. "Three bucks if I have it all done when you get home tonight?" he asked the newspaper.
His father's eyes appeared again briefly.'Two-fifty."
"Oh, man," Richie said. "You and Jack Benny."
"My idol," Went said from behind the paper. "Make up your mind, Richie. I want to read these box scores."
"Deal," Richie said, and sighed. When your folks had you by the balls, they really knew how to squeeze. It was pretty chuckalicious, when you thought it over. As he mowed, he practiced his Voices.
7
He finished-front, back, and sides-by three o'clock Friday afternoon, and began Saturday with two dollars and fifty cents in his jeans. Pretty damn near a fortune. He called Bill up, but Bill told him glumly that he had to go up to Bangor and take some kind of speech-therapy test.
Richie sympathized and then added in his best Stuttering Bill Voice: "G-G-Give em h-h-hell, Buh-Buh-Big Bih-Bill."
"Your f-f-face and my buh-buh-butt, T-T-Tozier," Bill said, and hung up.
He called Eddie Kaspbrak next, but Eddie sounded even more depressed than Bill-his mother had gotten them each a full-day bus-pass, he said, and they were going to visit Eddie's aunts in Haven and Bangor and Hampden. All three of them were fat, like Mrs Kaspbrak, and all three of them were single.
"They'll all pinch my cheek and tell me how much I've grown," Eddie said.
"That's cause they know how cute you are, Eds-just like me. I saw what a cutie you were the first time I met you."
"Sometimes you're really a turd, Richie."
"It takes one to know one, Eds, and you know em all. You gonna be down in the Barrens next week?"
"I guess so, if you guys are. Want to play guns?"
"Maybe. But... I think me and Big Bill have got something to tell you."
"What?"
"It's really Bill's story, I guess. I'll see you. Enjoy your aunts."
"Very funny."
His third call was to Stan the Man, but Stan was in dutch with his folks for breaking their picture window. He had been playing flying-saucer with a pie-plate and it took a bad bank. Kee-rash. He had to do chores all weekend, and probably next weekend, too. Richie commiserated and then asked Stan if he would be coming down to the Barrens next week. Stan said he guessed so, if his father didn't decide to ground him, or something.
"Jeez, Stan, it was just a window," Richie said.
"Yeah, but a big one," Stan said, and hung up.
Richie started to leave the living room, then thought of Ben Hanscom. He thumbed through the telephone book and found a listing for an Arlene Hanscom. Since she was the only lady Hanscom among the four listed, Richie figured it had to be Ben's number and called.
"I'd like to go, but I already spent my allowance," Ben said. He sounded depressed and ashamed by the admission-he had, in fact, spent it all on candy, soda, chips, and beef-jerky strips.
Richie, who was rolling in dough (and who didn't like to go to the movies alone), said: "I got plenty of money. You can gimme owesies." wooi:"
"Yeah? Really? You'd do that?"
"Sure," Richie said, puzzled. "Why not?"
"Okay!" Ben said happily. "Okay, that'd be great! Two horror movies! Did you say one was a werewolf picture?"
"Yeah."
"Man, I love werewolf pictures!"
"Jeez, Haystack, don't wet your pants."
Ben laughed. "I'll see you out in front of the Aladdin, okay?"
"Yeah, great."
Richie hung up and looked at the phone thoughtfully. It suddenly occurred to him that Ben Hanscom was lonely. And that in turn made him feel rather heroic. He was whistling as he ran upstairs to get some comics to read before the show.
8
The day was sunny, breezy, and cool. Richie jived along Center Street toward the Aladdin, popping his fingers and singing "Rockin" Robin" under his breath. He was feeling good. Going to the movies always made him feel good-he loved that magic world, those magic dreams. He felt sorry for anyone who had dull duties to discharge on such a day-Bill with his speech therapy, Eddie with his aunts, poor old Stan the Man who would be spending the afternoon scraping down the front-porch steps or sweeping the garage because the pie-plate he'd been throwing around swept right when it was supposed to sweep left.
Richie had his yo-yo tucked in his back pocket and now he took it out and tried again to get it to sleep. This was an ability Richie lusted to acquire, but so far, no soap. The crazy l'il fucker just wouldn't do it. Either it went down and popped right back up or it went down and dropped dead at the end of its string.
Halfway up Center Street Hill he saw a girl in a beige pleated skirt and a white sleeveless blouse sitting on a bench outside Shock's Drug Store. She was eating what looked like a pistachio ice-cream cone. Bright red-auburn hair, its highlights seeming coppery or sometimes almost blonde, hung down to her shoulderblades. Richie knew only one girl with hair of that particular shade. It was Beverly Marsh.
Richie liked Bev a lot. Well, he liked her, but not that way. He admired her looks (and knew he wasn't alone-girls like Sally Mueller and Greta Bowie hated Beverly like fire, still too young to understand how they could have everything else so easily... and still have to compete in the matter of looks with a girl who lived in one of those shimmy apartments on Lower Main Street), but mostly he liked her because she was tough and had a really good sense of humor. Also, she usually had cigarettes. He liked her, in short, because she was a good guy. Still, he had once or twice caught himself wondering what color underwear she was wearing under her small selection of rather faded skirts, and that was not the sort of thing you wondered about the other guys, was it?
And, Richie had to admit, she was one hell of a pretty guy.
Approaching the bench where she sat eating her ice cream, Richie belted an invisible topcoat around his middle, pulled down an invisible slouch hat, and pretended to be Humphrey Bogart. Adding the correct Voice, he became Humphrey Bogart-at least to himself. To others he would have sounded like Richie Tozier with a mild headcold.
"Hello, shweetheart," he said, gliding up to the bench where she was sitting and looking out at the traffic. "No sensh waitin for a bus here. The Nazish have cut off our retreat. The last plane leavesh at midnight. You be on it. He needsh you, shweetheart. So do I... but I'll get along shomehow."
"Hi, Richie," Bev said, and when she turned toward him he saw a purple-blackish bruise on her right cheek, like the shadow of a crow's wing. He was again struck by her good looks... only it occurred to him now that she might actually be beautiful. It had never really occurred to him until that moment that there might be beautiful girls outside of the movies, or that he himself might know one. Perhaps it was the bruise that allowed him to see the possibility of her beauty-an essential contrast, a particular flaw which first drew attention to itself and then somehow denned the rest: the gray-blue eyes, the naturally red lips, the creamy unblemished child's skin. There was a tiny spray of freckles across her nose.
"See anything green?" she asked, tossing her head pertly.